Steven Moffat

Samuel Anderson found out he’d landed a gig on “Doctor Who” the day after Thanksgiving last year. He was hanging out with friends, listening to loud music and generally relaxing when his agent called. He took the call alone on the balcony and found out he was going to play Danny Pink. “I went back inside and told my friends ‘Bloody hell, I just got “Doctor Who,”‘” Anderson said during a phone call from England the day before his first episode, “Into the Dalek” was set to debut. “Just then my phone rang again. It was my agent again, who said, ‘Don’t tell anyone.'” Lucky for Anderson, that momentary slip didn’t hurt him. “My friends are too cool for spoilers,” he said. Anderson wasn’t in the first episode of the new season, “Deep Breath,” but that doesn’t mean his character, […]

On Saturday night, the Doctors descended on Burbank. At the AMC Burbank 16, “Doctor Who’s” most loyal fans gathered for a special midnight screening of the eighth-season premiere, “Deep Breath.” It was their first chance to see the latest Doctor, played by Peter Capaldi, in action. And it was definitely one of the most dapper late-night movie crowds in recent history. Many fans arrived dressed as their favorite Doctors — there were bow ties and fezes in honor of Matt Smith, pinstripes and sneakers for David Tennant and even a long, colorful scarf or two to acknowledge Tom Baker, the fourth Doctor. They came from far away — Matt Borcky, dressed as Smith’s Doctor, and his three friends drove 100 miles from Bakersfield just for the screening. Yes, they could have just watched it at home when it aired on […]

Attention, Whovians. A trailer teasing the return of “Doctor Who” is making the rounds online, and although it might be brief, it does offer a few tantalizing hints about “Deep Breath,” the installment that kicks off the run of new episodes on BBC America later this month. Judging from the clip, the upcoming season looks to include all the classic bits of Doctor-ana: historical English setting (in this case the Victorian era), alien evildoers and a newly redesigned TARDIS, among them. Check it out below. Set to premiere Aug. 23, “Deep Breath” was written by “Doctor Who” executive producer Steven Moffat and directed by Ben Wheatley (known to indie film enthusiasts for such projects as “Kill List” and “Sightseers”). The episode will mark the proper beginning of Peter Capaldi’s run as the Twelfth Doctor and kicks off the eighth season […]

“Doctor Who” has finally set a day to return to his regular adventures. The new Doctor played by Peter Capaldi has been glimpsed here and there, but fans will finally get to see him in his first adventure on Aug. 23. That’s the day the new season, the eighth since the series was revived in 2005, returns to BBC America. Capaldi will be joined by returning companion Clara, played by Jenna Coleman, and a new character, Danny Pink, played by Samuel Anderson, who is a teacher at the school where Clara works. Pairing the Doctor with a couple of schoolteachers recalls the first “Doctor Who” adventures back in the early 1960s, which featured the Doctor (William Hartnell), his granddaughter (Carole Ann Ford) and her two schoolteachers, played by Jacqueline Hill and Ian Chesterton. Interestingly, Capaldi, who is 56, is about […]

“The Time of the Doctor” is out on Blu-ray and DVD on Tuesday, bringing Matt Smith’s farewell performance in the “Doctor Who” Christmas special to home video. Hero Complex readers get a peek at a clip from the bonus features, which provides a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the Wooden Cyberman — a more organic variation of the classic “Doctor Who” metal-man — and the stuntwoman who debuted the alien in the special. In the clip, lead writer and executive producer Steven Moffat also talks about the plethora of aliens, including Daleks, Weeping Angels and the Silence, that battle the Doctor in the special. “We’ve had a lot of returning monsters in this one,” Moffat says in the video (watch it below). “I want it to be a grand-standing battle for the Eleventh Doctor’s final moments. It doesn’t take just one monster […]

The Doctor might be getting a new companion. Samuel Anderson, who was in a brief scene in the “Doctor Who” 50th anniversary special, “The Day of the Doctor,” will be playing a new recurring character in the show’s eighth season. Anderson is set to play Danny Pink, a teacher at Coal Hill Secondary School and colleague of Clara Oswald (Jenna Coleman), according to BBC America’s blog. The school has been a recurring setting for “Doctor Who” since the classic science-fiction adventure series’ first episode, “An Unearthly Child.” In the 1963 episode, the Doctor’s granddaughter Susan Foreman attends the Coal Hill School while the Doctor (William Hartnell) repairs the TARDIS, and two teachers discover their secret. The Seventh Doctor (Sylvester McCoy) revisited the school in 1988’s “Remembrance of the Daleks,” and last year’s anniversary special revealed that current companion Clara Oswald […]

A new trailer for “Sherlock” Season 3 offers a glimpse of Benedict Cumberbatch’s consulting detective — alive and well after faking his death in last year’s season finale. The one-minute trailer, released Sunday, also shows a mustachioed Dr. John Watson (Martin Freeman), sharing a bed with Mary Morstan, the character’s wife in the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle stories about the pair of private eyes. Incidentally, Freeman’s real-life partner Amanda Abbington plays Morstan, who makes her debut in the upcoming season. Fan anticipation for the Golden Globe-nominated show’s return is high after the cliffhanger in Season 2’s finale, “The Reichenbach Fall,” in which Sherlock appeared to leap to his death from a tall building but was afterward revealed to be secretly and inexplicably alive. The mystery of his survival will be unraveled quickly in the new season, co-creator Steven Moffat told Comic-Con […]

It’s difficult to separate “Doctor Who” star Matt Smith from the larger-than-life role he’s inhabited for the past 3-1/2 years. Even out of costume, the 30-year-old actor radiates the exuberance and twinkly eyed curiosity that are the hallmarks of his character, the ever-regenerating, time traveling alien protagonist in the world’s longest-running sci-fi TV series. But his time in the role is about to run out – Smith will leave the series this year to follow a new career path that will take him to Hollywood; he recently acted opposite Christina Hendricks in the Ryan Gosling-directed thriller “How to Catch a Monster,” due out in 2014. The 55-year-old Scottish actor Peter Capaldi will take his place as the BBC show’s leading man. “I’d have very happily done another year,” Smith said, propping his boots up on the coffee table in a […]

PERSPECTIVE And as the world (or one obsessed subset thereof) watched, the name of the person to play the Twelfth Doctor — though not, of course, the name of the Doctor, which shall remain unspoken — was revealed. Peter Capaldi, the bookmakers’ choice by a wide margin, will take over for the retiring Matt Smith, the Doctor since 2010. Smith’s Doctor will regenerate into Capaldi’s — same character, just a different body — this Christmas. The new star of “Doctor Who” is best known to Americans, which is not to say well known, as the F-bombing spin doctor in Armando Iannucci’s political comedies “The Thick of It” (BBC series) and “In the Loop” (film spinoff) and, reaching back through the foggy mists of time, for Bill Forsyth’s gentle comedy of Scotland, “Local Hero.” He is, at any rate, better known […]

It’s official: Peter Capaldi has been announced as the new Doctor. The 55-year-old Scottish actor is by no means a “Doctor Who” discovery along the lines of the most recent Time Lord, Matt Smith. In fact, the new Doctor already has his own following from the British political satire “The Thick of It” and the big-screen spinoff “In the Loop.” In both the series and the film, Capaldi played a foul-mouthed political spin doctor named Malcolm Tucker. But fans worrying that this casting means the Doctor is about to go down an adults-only path should relax. As Capaldi reassured fans just moments after the announcement of his casting: “Malcolm has been banished from the mirror by this new Doctor, who wouldn’t put up with Malcolm’s language.” The big reveal was made during a live telecast on Sunday hosted by British […]